Sunday, February 08, 2009

Project 310 - Consequences

Continuing from the events of “Bad Girls”, consequences focuses on the result of Faith’s murder of the deputy mayor. But that’s not the only consequence this episode deals with. Again, let’s run them down one-by-one, from small to big.

-Willow finds out that Xander had sex with Faith, which kind of crushes her. It’s a little weird that Willow is so hurt by this, since she’s with Oz, but I guess she really thought something special could eventually happen with Xander. Not anymore.
-Faith tries to kill Xander. It’s another part of her downward spiral. She ends up getting captured by Angel, and they have a serious talk (of course, it doesn’t take -- it won’t until net year on “Angel” when Faith reappears, but it is Angel that eventually breaks her).
-Oh, and everyone finds out Faith killed the deputy mayor. Obviously things go from really, really, really bad to much worse because of this. The “consequence” of this is Wesley calls in the Watchers’ Council, Faith loses trust in everyone, and she goes bad.

The question that comes from this action is would things have been any different with Faith if the Watchers’ Council hadn’t intervened? The scene that follows in the Library would have you believe it’s possible, but let’s be honest, Faith was gone long before the Watchers’ Council came and tried to take Faith.

Remember, her trust issues with Buffy and the Watchers date back to “Revelations”, her recklessness has been around all season, and she’s always going to have “other Slayer” complex (yes, I just invented that, deal with it). She’s never going to be Buffy, even though she tried in “Faith, Hope and Trick”, so why try? Why not just be who she is, and let the chips fall where they may.

Unfortunately for Buffy and the Scoobies, the chips fall with Faith aligning herself with the Mayor. At this point, having seen these episodes so many times, you know what’s coming, but Faith’s line “I guess this means you have a job opening” to the Mayor was a legitimate shock back when I first saw it. And it’s still kinda creepy now.

Last note on this episode, which is a definite classic -- Eliza Dushku is hot. Like really. She’s on another level of hotness in this one. Xander is one lucky guy.